six hundred pounds. Its jaws were impossibly huge for its head. So were its teeth. So were its eyes, and they were looking right at me. I don’t know why it didn’t pounce right away. Maybe it was still surprised that I had the guts to try to escape. Or maybe it knew there was no rush. I was helpless. And hurt.
I forgot to mention that. It hadn’t just clubbed me with its paw. My adrenaline was pumping so hard I didn’t realize it at first, but it had sliced right through the thin material of my shirt from Ibara with its sharp claws. It had also sliced right through my shoulder. When I tried to push up on my left arm, I felt the pain. A quick look down showed me the grim reality. I was bleeding. Badly. The tattered shirt was already soaked with my brown blood and the wet patch was growing fast. I remembered back to when Uncle Press had speared the quig that had been chasing us down the snowy mountain as we escaped on a sled. The other quigs smelled the blood and attacked. They went after the wounded quig with a horrifying, cannibalistic bloodlust. I’ll never forget the pained screams of the injured quig as it was eaten alive by its buddies.
The quig in front of me had the same idea. I saw its big nose working, sucking in the blood smell that was filling the cavern. In a few seconds its own blood would start to boil. A few seconds after that the rest of my blood would start to spill. I only had a few seconds to save myself. Looking around quickly, I saw something that made absolutely no sense, but I didn’t stop to try to figure out the explanation. Lying in the dirt, not five feet from me, were four dado-killing rods from Quillan. Instinct took over. I rolled for the long, metal spears.
The quig let out a screeching bellow that made me shudder. I didn’t let it stop me though. It was coming for me. I would have only one shot. I grabbed for one of the rods. I needed two hands to control it, but didn’t have two hands. My shoulder burned with pain. It was useless. Too bad for me. The quig charged. It was making the first move. If there was anything I learned from Loor and Alder at the warrior training camp of Mooraj, it was to never make the first move. Lucky for me the quig hadn’t trained there as well. Since my back was to the beast, I had to sense its movement. My hope was, in its mindless bloodlust, it would attack without thinking. I swept up the long rod, clutched it with one fist, and spun around.
It all happened so fast it’s hard to describe exactly what happened. I remember seeing its eyes flash yellow. I also remember seeing its jaws opened wide, ready to chomp. In that brief flash of a moment, I remember thinking that it must have had a few hundred teeth in its mouth. Every last one looked sharp. For me, it was a target. I whipped the rod around and jammed it into the beast’s throat. I could feel the solid rod pierce flesh. The beast howled and gasped but didn’t stop its charge. It was the worst thing it could have done. The back end of the rod was planted against the rock wall of the cave, so the only place the other end could go was through the beast’s neck. I jumped out of the way and quickly grabbed another rod off the ground. The quig whipped its head back and forth, as if trying to shake the dado rod loose.
I quickly realized that the quig was just as dangerous that way as when it thought it was in control. The monster was in pain. It was angry. At me. The fight wasn’t over. I grabbed the second rod and did something that, as I write this now, seems too hideous to even consider, let alone pull off. But you do strange things when you’re fighting for survival. I lifted the weapon high like a javelin, but didn’t throw it. The chance of missing was too great. I had to make sure this weapon found its mark. I ran forward, timing my move so that I attacked at the exact moment the quig shook its head away from me. When it whipped its head back my way, I jammed the dado rod straight into its eye. The beast screamed. I didn’t back off. I forced the weapon farther in, no doubt piercing its brain. Gross? Well, yeah, but so what? It was him or me. Thinking back now, it kind of makes my stomach turn, but at the time all I could think of was killing that bad boy. It’s hard to describe the feeling. My heart was racing, obviously. I was desperate, but if I were to be honest, I’d have to say that I was also a little out of my mind.
It was a quig. A freakin’ quig! We had won Denduron. Its turning point had passed. Why was a quig guarding the flume? The monster stumbled. It may have been done, but I wasn’t. I had to make sure. I let go of the dado rod I had drilled through its brain and grabbed another. The beast fell onto its side. I didn’t hesitate. With my one good arm, I raised the third rod high and stabbed it down through its chest, where I imagined its black heart was beating. Now that I look back, I’m sort of ashamed to admit this, but writing these journals is about telling the truth for the ages, right? I stabbed the beast once, pulled out the rod, and stabbed it again, and again. I don’t know how many times I pierced the monster. More than I had to. At that point it was more about anger than self- preservation.
With each thrust I gritted my teeth and snarled, “I…am…not…done…yet!”
I stood over the dying beast, covered with blood, not sure how much was mine and how much was the monster’s. I had beaten it. I had survived. I wanted to stumble back into the flume and get out of there, but that wasn’t an option. Saint Dane had said that the first domino of Halla to fall would be Denduron. I thought we had prevented that many years before. As I stood looking down at the dying quig, I knew I was wrong. Denduron was back in play. I was in the right place. I also realized that Alder was on Denduron. The dado weapons were proof of that. They were the weapons he was supposed to return to Quillan. Why he hadn’t done that, I had no idea, but I was glad he hadn’t. They saved my life.
Once I calmed down, I realized I wasn’t out of danger. Far from it. If there was one quig, there would be more. If they smelled blood, they’d come running, looking for a frenzy feed. Since I was bleeding, I’d be on the menu. I had to be gone. I started to go for the leather and fur Denduron clothes that were lying around the flume cave, but soon realized I had a bigger problem. I was seriously hurting. If I wanted to make it out of that cave and down to the Milago village, I had to stop the blood flow. I pulled off my Ibara shirt, which wasn’t easy, because my left arm was useless. The pain from the slash felt like fire. Loque’s shirt was a rotted mess. That helped. I was able to half-pull and half-tear it off. Once I wrestled off the shirt, I saw two deep gouges that ran across my shoulder and my left pec. They were deep, too. Muscle was cut. I was in a bad way. How the heck was I supposed to bandage that up? Since my arm was useless anyway, I used the old shirt like a bandage and wrapped it around the top of my arm. That only covered half the wound. I looked around the cavern and saw some wide leather straps that could have been belts. I tied those under my armpits and around my chest. Would that stop the blood flow? I didn’t know. It was better than nothing.
The next trick was to get dressed. I knew it would be freezing outside, and I had to protect myself, so I worked my way into some of the leather clothes I found lying around. The toughest part was lacing up the leather shoes. At least my left hand still worked. Between that, my good right hand, and my teeth, I was able to strap myself up. The final touch was a furry cloak that I threw over my shoulders. I hoped it would be enough. There were no sleds in the cave. I was going to have to walk down that mountain, through the snow. It was going to be cold. Really cold. I picked up the final dado weapon, thinking I could use it as a walking stick. I leaned on the long rod, testing to see if I could hold my own weight. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do. It was time to get going. As I stepped out of the dark cavern, into the bright light of the three suns of Denduron, I had real doubts about whether or not I would be able to make it down that mountain.
My confidence bottomed out when I saw the bony spikes of quig spines sticking up in various places around the snowfield in front of me. At least they hadn’t yet smelled the blood that was pooling inside the cavern. I knew that would only be a matter of time, and wind direction. I had to move. Walking across the snow was hard. There was a thin crust of ice on top that wasn’t strong enough to hold my weight. I’d take a step and plant my foot, but as soon as I put weight on it, I’d break through the top layer and sink down to midcalf. Every time. Over and over. It was like walking in cold mud. I was glad I had grabbed the dado rod. It was the only thing that kept me from toppling. If I had gone over, I didn’t think I’d be able to pull myself back up.
I chose a route that kept me going downhill and as far away from the dormant quigs as possible. All I needed was for them to catch a whiff of my blood, and it would be like: “Come and get it!” Each time my foot broke through the snow with a loud crunch, I winced. Did they hear that? Would they hear the next one? I trudged a few hundred yards before clearing the final, buried quig. Huge relief. From then on, each agonizing step took me farther from danger…
And closer to exhaustion. I was freezing. Literally. My feet were so cold I couldn’t feel them. The bleeding had almost stopped, but I don’t think it was because of my makeshift bandages. I think it was freezing up. It would have been a tough trip even if I’d been healthy, but after losing all that blood I was getting weaker by the second. After a torturous hour I still couldn’t see to the end of the snowfield. I had made this journey a few times on a sled, traveling ten times as fast, and it still took a long while. When I came back up the mountain, it had been on horseback or in a mechanized dygo. I had never done this on foot. I was in trouble.
After another hour, things started to spin. I think I was being pulled forward more by gravity than by my own horsepower. I stopped thinking about what I might find on Denduron. I pretty much stopped thinking about everything. My brain was too blood starved for that. Colors swirled. I knew that I would soon pass out. Far ahead I
